Tag Archives: eq

Being an EverQuest raid leader is a position of responsibility. Sure, it’s not on the same scale as school teacher, police officer or children’s TV presenter, but it should not be taken lightly. As a raid leader your actions and language should be an example to those you lead. Raiders are of all ages and backgrounds, ethnically and religiously diverse and you should always take care to be courteous.

Choice of words therefore is critical. I would strongly advocate never swearing.

Unless absolutely necessary.

Such as in the following situations.

Readers of a nervous disposition or delicate nature should stop reading now (also, if you’re under 18 you should seek your parent or guardian’s permission before reading, or check with your local wizard).

You can read part one of this series, and the general background here. But in summary, I played EverQuest, I ended up being a co-leader of a most excellent raid alliance, and these posts are about remembering some of the madness that entailed.

EverQuest was brutal about death, right from the outset. You lost XP, you had to go and find your corpse to get your gear back, and that meant getting to it, without any existing gear. Eventually you could get resurrected, and over time they added ways to summon your corpse to you, but they never got rid of the XP penalty. In groups, you could expect to die a couple of times per night if you were doing tough content, in raids, depending on your role, you could expect to die 10 or more times. Over the course of an evening, that’s a reasonable amount of lost XP even if you are getting 96% resurrections. But that was the job, if you were a tank, puller, healer or crowd controller you were going to die more than anyone else. Of course, everyone else was going to die as well ….

The tanks on our raids had their own channel, and death was a common topic. Our tanks were fearless in the face of death and gave it the respect it deserved.

Callous

[Sat Mar 22 21:57:11 2008] You tell tnftank:7, 'if tinyface dies, just laugh at him and then step on his corpse to take over tanking'
[Sat Apr 28 21:31:23 2007] You tell tnftank:7, 'If Cheichn is still afk he's about to die'

Encouraging

[Sat Oct 13 19:41:04 2007] Sidyenai tells tnftank:7, 'ok, nev, you go to mirror and look yourself into your eyes and say: i wil not die this raid, i will not die this raid .. 20 times .. :D'
[Sat Jul 19 20:31:51 2008] Zerblag tells tnftank:7, 'AE ramp on Nightshade. Don't die to it or you get laughed at.'
[Sat Mar 15 21:22:17 2008] Tinyface tells tnftank:7, 'Dont fall off the walkway, you will pop to the middle and die a horrible death'
[Sat Aug 04 21:39:58 2007] Zerblag tells tnftank:7, 'It'll be faster just to die Aaddx.'

Introduction

The guild I was a member of in EverQuest was a ‘family’ guild, as they were known. It existed for social reasons and to allow us to enjoy the group/casual element of the game. We were also friends with a few other guilds in a similar position. The thing with EverQuest is that it sucked you in, and so a few of us, starting small, began raiding things with a small alliance of guilds. Over time the raids grew, but we prided ourselves on casual raiding, we enforced as few rules as possible and we avoided big raid style loot management (DKP).

We ended up beating some of the toughest content in the game, and boy, did we have fun. These posts are random memories I have about raiding in EverQuest, both with my own raid team and with other raid guilds and alliances.

Burn!

My first experience of large scale raiding in EverQuest was with the Blood & Guts guild. They were in a raid team formed from two European guilds so they raided pretty much in my timezone. I’d had almost no raid experience, joined them with my wizard, and went on a learning curve that looked more like a cliff. As a wizard, my role was simple.

don’t die

don’t get anyone else killed

don’t break mezz

nuke the mobs until they’re dead

This should be pretty easy, and to be fair, it’s one of the easiest raid roles in EverQuest. One of the most colourful raid leaders with Blood & Guts was Kasstou. I was always amazed that one German guild and one French guild used English as the primary language in their raids, which certainly made it easier for me, but must have made it a nightmare for them. Not only were they typing in a foreign language, but they were doing so in a high stress environment trying to convey critical information.

Anyway, Kasstou had a habit of shouting ‘burn’ into the raid channel. Here’s a few examples,

This used to frustrate me, because calling for burn suggested I hadn’t been trying to do as much DPS as I could have, the rest of the time. I was a conscientious wizard, I was always trying to ride that line between aggro and DPS, I was always burning! Once or twice I even complained about this to fellow group members.

When I started co-running my own raids, however, all that moaning went out of the window. It became obvious very quickly that sometimes, you needed a single word to inspire greatness in your raid team, to elevate them to greater heights of damage. At those times, BURN was the right choice, and so over time, I found myself using it more and more as we raided!

Reading back these log entries, even now, reminds me of the events, the mobs and the people involved in raiding in EverQuest, I miss you all, they were good times!

Inverted Burns

Pre-emptive Burns

[Sat Aug 11 20:35:03 2007] You tell your raid, 'remember - full burn from the outset - dying with any mana or endurance is a waste'
[Sat May 21 20:38:49 2005] You tell your raid, 'and from 90% you go full burn and nuke the fucker into the ground without mercy'

Wrong Burns

And finally, When Burns Go Bad

[Sat Mar 15 22:02:19 2008] You tell your raid, 'there will be NO BURN call - we CONTROL this fight all the way through'
and then
[Sat Mar 15 23:27:53 2008] You tell your raid, 'FULL BURN Emperor Draygun, the Lich King DOTS and SWARM PETS GO'

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be. - Hubert H. Humphrey.